I suddenly felt his hand appear on the low of my back. It slid slowly done my spine and rested there gently as we made our way down the frozen food aisle. Just an ordinary day of typical grocery shopping, yet when his warm palm rested in the curve of my spine I felt extraordinary. I felt special, I felt blessed, I felt loved. How in the world a simple gesture like a hand on my back could almost bring me to my knees, I do not know. But it did serve to remind me how fortunate I was to have found the man God had for me.
It had not always been this way. I can remember over a decade ago crying on the phone long distance with my father. He was angry, the stuttering kind, where I could feel a steely sadness mixed with rage as it dripped from his words.
“Don’t be mad at him, Daddy,” I begged.
I still wanted to protect the man who had made me cry. I still loved him. And even though for the past year I had pretended things weren’t falling apart beneath my feet, I had to face the reality that they had finally shattered. The ground on which I stood had not only shaken, but the rug had been pulled completely out. I was getting a divorce.
“He said he doesn’t love me anymore, Daddy,” I had cried into the landline receiver.
I don’t believe in divorce, which is incredibly ironic considering I am a divorced woman. I never believed in it. I never wanted it for my life, and I never believed it would happen to me. Until it did. One day you find yourself walking into a church building, broken on the inside, smiling on the outside, hoping no one is looking at you like you are afraid they are. Like you’re wearing The Scarlet D. The shame of a failed marriage slung around your neck like an albatross, a constant reminder and self-inflicted punishment for not making your relationship work.
I can remember as an 8-year-old first discovering the stigma surrounding divorce. My Mother had found a wonderful man to marry, one who wouldn’t leave us repeatedly, penniless and in peril. A man who loved her, but who also loved me. An honest man, a selfless man, a Kinsman Redeemer to take us into a home of love. I remember watching my mother cry on the edge of her bed when she thought I wasn’t there. My soon-to-be, adoptive Dad’s lifelong preacher had refused to marry him to my Mom, because of the sin of her prior divorce.